In nonfiction, our winner is Ellen Adams for her essay “The Something I Am Telling You.” Nonfiction judge Meghan Daum said of the piece: “In telling the story of a brain losing its moorings, the author pulled off an astonishing trick and made me feel like the brain itself was talking to me. There is…
In fiction, our winner is Rowan Beaird for her story “Perennial.” Of her story, fiction judge Garth Greenwell said, “The subject of this delicate, psychologically penetrating story is the derangement of grief, which it dramatizes with deftness and patience. It demands a similar patience from the reader; its quiet discloses startling depths. Best of all…
Poetry judge Natalie Diaz said, “These poems have a lexicon and language all their own. They build each body—body of person, body of land or sea—with a precision and a sensuality that comes from understanding there are more than five senses. A reader is given the gift of feeling the silences, the touches, the strengths…
“I am a farmer, all I own is in the sun and rain.” In the uncultivated prairies of central Alberta, Stephan G. Stephansson (1853–1927) grew life into the land, raised a large family, helped build a thriving community, and composed more than 2,300 pages of poetry and 1,700 pages of prose. After long days in…
Ploughshares is pleased to present Weike Wang with the twenty-seventh annual John C. Zacharis Award for her novel Chemistry (Knopf, 2017). The $1,500 award, which is named after a former president of Emerson College, honors the best debut book by a Ploughshares writer, and alternates annually between poetry and fiction. This year’s judge was Ladette…
Ann Beattie recommends After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, A Daughter’s Search by Sarah Perry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). “It’s the story of a murder, but it’s an amazing account of class in America, of life on the fringe of a fabric we now see fraying more every day. It’s beautifully written and I’m amazed that…
What are these stories and why are they here? As this issue’s guest editor, I suppose it’s part of my job to justify their existence, though, as with my own work, I’m tempted to say just read them. No disclaimers or praise from me will change your appreciation of them. Their charms should be self-evident,…
Lauren Groff recommends Transit by Rachel Cusk: “Transit is the second in a projected three-book series of strange and elegant anti-novels from the radically undersung British writer Rachel Cusk. Most novels spark urgency with plot, but Transit’s urgency comes, instead, from the voices of the people the narrator spends her life listening carefully to. The…
from The Swank Hotel There was a girl, way back, who was going to become the patron saint of the mentally ill and their caretakers. The girl loved her father, and her priest loved her in a fatherly way. Her father, the petty king of Oriel, loved his queen. To him, the queen was perfect,…
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